Monday, June 08, 2015

To coincide with the publication of NIGHT MUSIC, I'm inviting readers to participate in an art competition. A panel of judges will select seven designs to be used for a set of art cards that will be given away with copies of the book. Here's the brief: pick a novel of horror or the supernatural, and create an alternative cover for it.
You might fancy having a go at Stoker's DRACULA, or Mary Shelley's
FRANKENSTEIN; or, The Modern Prometheus, or THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE
by Shirley Jackson. A novella like STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL & MR.
HYDE may appeal, or something more modern like Stephen King's SALEM'S
LOT, or Thomas Harris's THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, which is much a horror
novel as a thriller. We'll even allow you to use short story
collections as your inspiration, such as GHOST STORIES OF AN ANTIQUARY
by M.R. James, or THE DUNWICH HORROR and OTHERS by H.P. Lovecraft. The
choice is yours: all we ask is that the cover be inspired by a work
already in print. Because one of the cards will feature the NIGHT MUSIC cover design, I'd prefer
that you not choose one of my books for your design.

Winners will receive a check for €250, or the equivalent in local
currency (dollars, dinars, shells, domesticated animals) and a signed
copy of NIGHT MUSIC , as well as a set of the art cards. The
art cards will measure 12.5 cm x 17.5 cm, so your design should follow
those proportions. Designs may be in color or black and white, and may
take the form of drawings, paintings, photographs, collages or anything
else that can be reproduced by standard four-color printing processes.
The design must include the title and author's name of a work of horror currently
available for sale or in the public domain. Please do not use any images
that would need to be licensed from their copyright holders. Send your submissions as PDF or JPEG files, attached to an email that includes your full name and mailing address, to contact@johnconnollybooks.com with the subject line NIGHT MUSIC ART COMPETITION. Closing date for receipt of finished designs is July 31. Good luck!

Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Books Read in November:The Heist by Daniel SilvaDeadline by John SandfordReykjavik Nights by Arnaldur Indridason Sitcom by Saul AusterlitzHow to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles YuI Must Say by Martin ShortThe Man in the High Castle by Philip K. DickThe Lily and the Lion by Maurice DruonMad River by John Sandford

Books Read in December:Doctor Who: A History by Alan KistlerLullaby by Ace Atkins1984 by George OrwellLight of the World by James Lee BurkeSummer Lightning by P.G. Wodehouse

Books Read in January:The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles DickensMan on the Run: Paul McCartney in the 1970s by Tom DoyleThe Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard FlanaganDarkmouth by Shane HegartyA Shed of One's Own: Midlife Without the Crisis by Marcus BerkmannArmchair Nation by Joe MoranSomething Red by Douglas Nicholas

So my experiment in keeping note of the books that I've read during the year comes to a kind of close — except, of course, that it doesn't, as I'm going to continue recording the titles, and may even continue to bother other people by talking about them, in this blog or elsewhere.

A friend of mine named Bob Gulyas sent an email this morning to tell me that he'd begun recording his reading for the first time. Bob has quite a few years on me, and admitted that if, when younger, he'd started entering in a notebook the titles of all the books he'd read, he'd have a shelf filled with notebooks by now. Still, it's never too late to start, and he's off and running now.

As I think I've mentioned before, I probably read more books than ever this year simply because I had committed to keeping a record of them. Writing their names down was a little like wearing a literary Fitbit: whereas in the past I might sometimes have been inclined to put my feet up in front of the television instead of reading, my desire to get in as many books as possible in any given month meant that television — and other distractions, such as watching movies on planes — fell by the wayside. There were books to be read, dammit! I had to keep up my average.

The issue of difficult books did occasionally arise, though, as longer — or more literary — titles simply took up more reading time than others. Someone suggested that a way around this might be to categorize a book as having an average length — say 300 pages — so a 600-page book would count as two books, a 900-page book three, and so on until I could consider picking up Roberto Bolano's undeniably hefty 2666 (898 pages, 2.6 lbs in hardback) without fear of mucking up my book score. But that felt like cheating, and I never did get around to 2666. (I've since been warned off it by a couple of people, so it's unlikely that I ever will read it unless I'm jailed for a considerable length of time — although one of the people who told me not to read it is, in fact, in jail, and even he couldn't get through it.

The elephant in the room where the matter of big books is concerned is Dickens, and my list of books read in 2014 — more than 80 — would be one title longer if it weren't for The Old Curiosity Shop, which I started at Christmas and finished on January 1st. I try to read one Dickens a year. I've now read pretty much all of the entertaining ones, with the exception of A Tale of Two Cities, and now must resign myself to tackling Barnaby Rudge, and Martin Chuzzlewit; splendid stuff, I'm sure (well, maybe not Barnaby Rudge, which tends to be ominously disguised as one of his "less popular" works), but probably lacking the ease of The Pickwick Papers, or the greatness of Bleak House.

Anyway, The Old Curiosity Shop scuppered me at the last. I blame Little Nell, who as everyone knows (and spoiler alert if you're the only one who doesn't), is doomed from the off, and looks increasingly peakéd as the book progresses. It's one of those novels that really only gets interesting when the supposed heroine and her aged relative are offstage, yielding to the villainous Quilp in particular. Still, there's a certain satisfaction in having read it, and instead of being the last book read in 2014 it became the first book finished in 2015.